The Setting Sun and the Rolling World

Fiction | Short Story Collection | Adult | Published in 1987

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Story 16Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Story 16 Summary: “The Day the Bread Van Didn’t Come”

Mr. and Mrs. Pfende own a grocery store where they make most of their money by selling bread. One day, their bread delivery man Moses is very late. As the couple argues over why Moses is late and whether he deserves to be fired, details about Mr. and Mrs. Pfende’s lives are revealed. Mrs. Pfende was married once before to a man with whom she had two sons. The husband died, however, and his family took her children, claiming she was a witch. She remarried Mr. Pfende, who is sterile and thus unable to give her children.

As resentment grows between them, Mrs. Pfende entertains the idea of an affair with Moses. The 15 minutes they spend together when he delivers the bread is the highlight of her day. Meanwhile, Mr. Pfende is largely oblivious to this; for example, he inaccurately assumes that the jersey his wife is knitting is for him, not Moses.

Finally, the bread van arrives, but the driver is not Moses. The driver reveals that Moses was killed when a timber truck crashed into his van. Mr. Pfende laughs, exclaiming, “To think I was thinking of having him fired! Firing a dead man, hahahaha!” (177). The driver grabs Mr. Pfende by the collar, explaining that Moses was his best friend.

Mrs. Pfende offers the driver the jersey she knit for Moses, and he graciously accepts it. Yet when Mrs. Pfende begins to babble about her sons and how she would like to see the new driver again, the driver spits on the ground and says he doesn’t get mixed up with other men’s wives.

After the driver leaves, Mrs. Pfende storms into the bedroom, smashes her framed wedding photo, and tears up her marriage certificate. Meanwhile, Mr. Pfende beams behind the counter, ecstatic at the influx of customers there to buy bread.

Story 16 Analysis

Two major themes emerge in “The Day the Bread Van Didn’t Come.” The first is the oft-revisited notion that when bad fortune befalls a man, the woman in closest emotional vicinity is branded a witch. This is especially true if, as in Mrs. Pfende’s case, the woman in question is extraordinarily attractive. The narrator notes that “her beauty had been reason enough for them to believe [she was a witch]. You are not made that beautiful without having a crack in you” (175). To avoid being branded a witch, a woman cannot possess any power whatsoever, not even the illusory power inherent in beauty.

The second theme is the depressing conclusion that, for many in the city, money outweighs family. This theme appeared earlier in “Coming of the Dry Season,” in which Moab squanders his paycheck on booze and women rather than spend it on a bus ticket home to see his dying mother. Here, the divide between family and money is equally stark, as Mr. Pfende gleefully counts his profits from bread sales while Mrs. Pfende is in their bedroom, smashing the physical artifacts of her marriage and cursing her husband’s name and eternal soul. At once impotent and oppressive, Mr. Pfende becomes a vessel for all the pain and humiliation Mrs. Pfende suffers at the hands of the patriarchy.